Why "The Perfect Brick"?
I'd basically given up on my dream to qualify for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. It had become too difficult, too remote. The international athletes were so much better than I was, and the standard of competition was just too high. I questioned the coaches, found excuses and blamed everyone except myself. Fortunately, something very deep down inside me pushed its way through the layers of doubt and I decide to give it one more shot. While trawling through videos of interviews and graduation speeches to motivate me, I stumbled upon one that hit home. It was an interview on YouTube where actor, Will Smith, describes a task his father set for him and his brother. The task was to rebuild a wall in front of the business their father owned. Building a wall is a daunting task for anyone who has never done so before. Smith describes how the idea of building an entire wall seemed too difficult for him and his brother to comprehend. However, as the boys began to build the wall, they realized that the task needed to be broken down into manageable steps. Instead of setting out each day with the idea of building a wall, they simply attempted to lay one brick at a time, as perfectly as they could. Their focus shifted from the enormous idea of building an entire wall to, more realistically, simply laying one perfect brick at a time. That was the only thing they had to do - lay that one perfect brick. Once one perfect brick was laid they could then lay the next perfect brick, and so on. The individual tasks were now realistic, simpler and more doable. It took months for the two boys to build that wall, but in the end they successfully completed the task. After that experience, Smith used the lessons he learned from building that wall, which still stands today, to influence his subsequent life tasks.
This principle of the "perfect brick" changed my view on accomplishing challenges I previously believed to be impossible. I had been so focused on or consumed by the end results that I had not been paying enough attention to the individual tasks that contribute to completing a goal. So I stopped focusing on the future and started focusing on the undertakings I could accomplish in the present. The present, I noticed, was the only time I had any control over, and working this way made it easier for me to lay one perfect brick at a time. When I didn't set out with the end goal in mind, breaking a task up into its component parts was less psychologically daunting and the results were surprisingly more perfect than when I stressed myself, unnecessarily. I began to apply this principle to my triathlon training. Co-incidentally, one of the sessions triathletes use to train for a race is referred to as a brick session. Smith's interpretation of the "perfect brick" transitioned...perfectly. The brick session involves 2 or 3 of the triathlon disciplines (swimming, cycling and running) done within a few minutes of each other. It's tough! It has to be tough to prepare the mind and body for race day. Each time I trained, I thought about swimming a perfect brick, cycling a perfect brick and running a perfect brick. I wasn't building a wall. I was building a foundation for the qualifying race that would allow me to achieve the dream I had all but abandoned, earning that spot at Kona later in October, 2014.
This brings me to the purpose of this blog, which is to expand on how my life has changed because of my hunger to be better today, than I was yesterday. I would like to invite you to join me so that you can begin to figure out the walls in your own life that seem too difficult to build or climb or overcome. To help you do this, I'd like to give you some insight into who I used to be, who I am now and who I strive to be in the future.
It's 2009...I'm 1.75 meters tall and at this point in time, I weigh 86 kg (190lbs), work a 12-14 hour day, 6 days a week and can finish a bottle of vodka in an evening. Pizza, chocolates, battered sausages and midnight deserts from the local petrol (gas) station are my normal diet and I regularly bribe cashiers to sell me bottles of wine after 8pm (more like 11pm, in most cases). I also own a successful company, have an awesome social life and a relationship with someone who truly loves me and gives me the time and space to fulfill my own needs. That last part probably sounds awesome, right? But something was missing. I was missing. I had this feeling that I needed to, wanted to and could do more. There was nothing in my life that challenged me, or made me proud of who I was. I had always tried hard, or at least I thought I had, but I had never achieved something that I (not those around me) could be proud of.
So I went looking for something remarkable to do, something incredibly difficult to overcome that would allow me to be proud of myself. And I thought I found something. Truth be told, I just inherited that something. I grew up with a father who completed 10 Comrades Marathons (an 89 km (55 mi) South African ultra distance marathon between Pietermaritzburg and Durban or Durban and Pietermaritzburg, depending on which year you run it). 13,000 - 15,000 runners compete in and complete Comrades each year. The marathon is not necessarily about about how fit you are or how many hours you spend training. It's about how strong you are, mentally. My father loves Comrades. He would train barely enough to complete it, but his mental resolve allowed him to do so 10 times over. He wasn't the best, but he certainly wasn't the worst, either. After each race, he'd bring back stories, war stories, from the race and would hold onto those stories for an entire year until he started training a few months before the next race. My dad is proud of his achievements, as are others who run Comrades, as well they should be. By the end of 2009, I'd completed 2 Comrades Marathons, but I still didn't feel pride in my achievements. I didn't understand. Completing even one Comrades is no mean feat. There are endless stories of people pushing themselves through such races and other super-human feats, and people love to discuss these stories in awe over the dinner table. The problem is that people in awe, who congratulate someone who has made such an achievement, can temporarily boost that person's self esteem, but that's about all they can do. The congratulations can become more effective for that person after they drink a few glasses of wine, but in the morning, the achievement is forgotten and the person is left, again, with the same yearning to be proud of themselves.
In 2009, I also completed my first Half Ironman distance triathlon, it was also my first ever triathlon. The race consists of a 1.9 km (1.2 mi) swim, 90 km (56 mi) cycle and a 21 km (13 mi) run. For whatever reason, triathlons began to fill that empty part of me. It's the most individual sport I've ever known. It's you and only you. Competitors have vastly different strengths over the 3 disciplines and it's a challenge right up to the finish line. Sometimes you don't even come within 100 meters of your rivals until the last few kilometers of the last discipline, the run. It's a strategic sport. It's knowing when, how hard and for how long to push. It's learning that others will be stronger than you in certain disciplines, but that the race is seldom won by the fastest swimmer. It's about patience, it's about nerve, and it's about what needs to be done in the moment!
Five years later, in 2014, I weigh 65 kg, work an 8-10 hour day, 5 days a week and although I could still finish a bottle of vodka in an evening, I haven't done so for about 2 years. I wake up between 4 and 5 am, depending on the session I have scheduled for that day, eat a slice or 2 of toast, and drink a protein shake and a cup of coffee. Then off to swim, cycle, run, or a combination of these. Then I'm back home for breakfast, a few eggs, another protein shake, fruit and a second cup of coffee, maybe (probably) a third, as well. I'm a bit of a coffee addict...it wakes me up just as fast as it puts me to sleep and it's my comfort drink. After the coffee, I'm ready for my working day. In the past 6 years, I've completed 4 Comrades Marathons, finishing the fourth 3 hours faster than the first, 5 Full Ironman events and numerous Half Ironman (better known as the 70.3 Ironman) events, including the 70.3 World Championships in Las Vegas in 2013. And, as I mentioned, I achieved the seemingly impossible task of qualifying for the Ironman World Championship in October of this year.
Kona is the home of the Ironman event. The World Championship includes a 3.8km sea swim, 180km cycle and a 42.2km run. A triathlete qualifies for the starting line up at Kona by placing first, second or sometimes third in their age group in an international Ironman event during the same year. Since I placed first in my age group in my last Full Ironman, I secured my spot. When I achieved this, I finally began to feel the pride I had so desperately been seeking. That pride didn't come from winning my age group, it came from all those "perfect bricks" that had made an impossible dream, possible. Most importantly, though, my true pride came from realizing that success is about laying "perfect bricks" in everything I do, regardless of the outcome and regardless of whether people see that outcome or not. My win didn't happen because of some natural talent I have. It happened because I learned how to strive, continuously and silently, to better myself. I'm proud of that! It happened because I was willing to change and make sacrifices. I'm proud of that, too! Nobody saw how I fought myself at 4am some mornings just to drag myself out of bed to train, or how I fought myself to leave a party early so I could do my brick session the next day. The times when I didn't leave the party early, but still trained the next day, were hell. Ironically, they were some of my best sessions because I had to force myself to focus on one moment at a time. Any fatigue I felt had to wait a few more hours until I was done before I would allow it to set in. I'm not advocating partying hard before a training session, I am just grateful that I was able to gain a greater appreciation for focus, itself. I'm very proud of that!
Focusing on individual tasks, training or otherwise, has completely changed my life. Achieving a slot at Kona was amazing, and the attention surrounding the achievement was completely unexpected and so became more meaningful. Someone said to me after that qualifying race that at least now I could relax, because it's not as if I can win my age group at Kona. While it might be true that I can't win, I'm certainly not going to rest. All I know is that today I have a training session and as long as I make the brick as perfect as I can, my foundation, come race day, will allow me to be the best I can be! I'm most proud of that!
